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Sunday, August 31, 2014

Pitch

They come into my office. Two of them,
young things. It’s all young things these days. He’s dressed in a
suit that would make a Ken doll cringe in sympathy, she looks like
she was gutted up and remade by one of those reality shows that
offers to make women amazing – by cutting up their bodies and
making them pretty because that’s all that counts these days. Even
the kids like this that come pitching ideas to the studio look like
they belong as extras in some teenage soap opera. I bet they even
know what boxes they’d tick for demographics.

That’s the world these days. More and
more old people, but we pander to the kids. Getting to the point now
where it’s easier to find an ethnic on TV than an old person, at
least not one who isn’t ethnic. Or something-or-other ticking some
boxes. Me? I’m balding, fat, and I would be smoking if Beryl hadn’t
made me quite for the fourth time in two years last month. I’m
drinking coffee. It doesn’t help, but it probably counts as a diet.

“You have a pitch?”

“Yes, sir.” She simpers, smiles.
Probably expects to get something out of it, but I haven’t had
anything to give in at least two years. Stress gets you every damn
time in this business. “We have a new project in –.”

I wave away the papers and cd rom and
usb crap the kid offers me. He looks younger than he is: there’s
nothing hard in his eyes. Her, I’m not as sure about. “Talk to
me. Tell me your idea.” I smile. “Sell it to the network.”

He blinks, opens his mouth, closes it.
“The show is called Waking Up. That’s the working title.
We’ll need to figure out a real one closer to transmission, but
it’s going to be very hard to advertise and needs to be hidden from
the public. Ideally we do an entire short series – say, 13
episodes? – have them in the box and then begin showing the show,
advertising it after. Let word of mouth build, social media light it
up and see what happens.”

“Which is?”

She takes over. “Waking Up is
about a patients in hospital who have to undergo surgery. The surgery
happens as normal, but we have a stage set up – a vast one with
actors, a whole town, extras. You name it, we go all out. They wake
up in it, and we convince they they really died and went to Heaven.
And the audience sees how long it takes them to work this out.”

I stare at her. Then him. Then back to
her. They both offer up their eager smiles. “You’re not joking.”

“Why would we be joking?”

I remind myself how the reality TV fad
started. There is a bottle in my desk. I don’t reach for it.
“Because people believe in Heaven?”

“Oh, no one who is serious
does,” he says. “Old people, yes. Not you, but old people. That
will help the show since every radio type and most of the talking
heads on TV will rant
against
it, letters get written and it becomes the sort of show where
watching it is an act of rebellion. You don’t get shows like that
anymore. If it has to go all-digital, so much the better. We pepper
it with ads, find companies willing to gamble on product placement
and we’re off!”

“And
the lawsuits?” I say, because I have to say something sane or reach
for the bottle.

“Oh,
we’ll clear it with the regulatory bodies and the lawyers,” she
says. “The network has deep pockets and that is what wins court
cases. We simply outspend, emphasize the publicity they gain – I’m
sure some will get book deals and chat show tours out of it. It’s
money we lose, but it goes toward
less lawsuits in the end. Of
course, we’d need to change it up come the second season. All new
actors, new sets, probably begin filming it while the first one is
airing
so less of the patients catch onto what we’re doing. And we add in
the twist.”

“The
twist.”

“In
the second season, ‘Heaven’ is really Hell.” She smiles.

I
don’t smile back. I stare at her, and him, and hand the usb and cd
rom and papers back to the kid. “Get out of my office.”

“But
–.”

“Get
out.”

They
get. Part of me wonders if Fox or HBO will take up the show. The
rest of me doesn’t give a damn, and it’s been a long time since I
did that. I turn off my computer and head outside for an early lunch.
Maybe today wasn’t going to have as much stress as I’d thought.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”